Auoroa Mcfee, sadly there are no laws to protect us on the internet, our children are so vunerable to these attacks, and its our own fault as adults that we dont keep them off the internet, you can report them to facebook, or try deleting the profile and, read this article it is a rather true and sad story about facebook. and f you wouldnt mind passing the word around, Facebook can be very dangerious. and I say this to all who is listening there are alot of people out there who can look at these pages and distroy innocent lives,
best of luck to you Shorty..







Facebook: Friend or Foe?



Four years ago, I opened my Facebook account. Back then, I was only in my freshman year of high school, but my cousin, who was older, insisted that I create an account. At first, I didn't know a lot of people that used Facebook. Sure, I had a couple of friends, but not that many. Four years later, I'm a freshman in college and I log onto Facebook every day. Through this website, I communicate with my friends, see pictures that people have taken at the different parties and activities, and find out what people plan to do during the weekend. I come from Puerto Rico, and because I'm studying so far away from home, Facebook is a connection, sometimes the only one, that I have with people back home.

But I'm not the only one that frequently uses Facebook. I remember about two months ago, there was an article in a Puerto Rican newspaper about Facebook in which a couple of teenagers were interviewed on how they used the site. The interview I remember the most was with a girl, a high school senior, who signed into Facebook about six times a day. It astonished me that someone would sign on to a website so many times. But then I began thinking about how many times my friends and I connect to Facebook and I realized we were always connected. We can be studying, listening to music, talking, or just hanging out, and the Facebook window is always in the background.

People even stop doing other more productive things in order to connect to Facebook and find out what has happened there. In high school, I remember that several times my best friend and I started procrastinating by using Facebook in order to avoid studying. And that didn't stop in high school; my roommates here at MIT still procrastinate by signing on to Facebook. In this way, they entertain themselves by seeing what other people are doing instead of studying... and so do I.

As a joke, some of my friends call themselves Facebook Addicts. They say that they are addicted to Facebook because they could spend hours using it. Although they say it as a joke, to some extent they really are addicted to Facebook. We all are. Anything about a person can be found out through Facebook. Within the site, one can find pictures, wall posts, and different applications that people add, and, with them, it is easy to find out if the person is in a relationship or not, what he or she did last weekend, who the person's friends are, and many other things. For this reason we must ask ourselves: is Facebook so popular simply because it makes it extremely easy for people to spy on other people?

This site makes people's private life public. And people may not realize the implications of this. What were once private subjects, like one's relationship status or conversations among friends, have now become public things that anyone can access. And people pay attention to these private details. Today changing one's relationship status from "single" to "in a relationship" on Facebook is a really big step among teenagers. And so is changing it the other way around.

My best friend back in Puerto Rico had a girlfriend and, as a result, his Facebook status read "in a relationship". One Friday he accidentally changed his status from "in a relationship" to "single" without noticing. I went out to a party with him where we were supposed to meet some friends and his girlfriend. When we arrived, all of the people in the party immediately asked my friend what had happened between him and his girlfriend, and why they had broken up. He couldn't have been more confused about what they were asking him, until one of the people there explained that they had read on Facebook that my friend's relationship status was "single". After this my friend changed his status back to the way it was before, but it is an example of how my friend's private life became public because of Facebook. A mere change in relationship status, which can be accomplished by one click of one's mouse, caused an incredible upheaval.

However, what is even more incredible is that we do not notice that we are intruding on someone else's privacy and, sometimes, that very person doesn't notice either. What was once considered an intrusion into someone's privacy has now become something we do daily. Because of this, we must ask ourselves: what impact is this having on society? Is the fact that we are publishing our personal life on Facebook having a great impact on our society and in its values? And how?

I believe that Facebook has impacted the lives of many adults as well as teenagers. Facebook may have been created for teenagers and college students, but many adults and parents have now created Facebook accounts of their own. Facebook has made it more acceptable for things that were once private to become public. Parents now use Facebook to learn what their children do when they go out. However, this website has also had good impacts in many people's lives. Is has made it easier for people to stay in touch with friends and family members, even when they are far away. When I was younger, if a friend moved to the United States, I never heard from him again, and our friendship ended. But now, because of Facebook, I am able to keep in touch with people and friends all around the nation. It is nice to know that, no matter the distance, you can always say "hi" or "how are you?" to a friend.

One way Facebook has affected our society is that now people can be fired from a job or expelled from school because of things posted on the website. In my high school one boy was expelled because on Facebook he exhibited conduct which "was not appropriate for a student" of the school. He created an account using a teachers name and then impersonated her. Although he may have deserved punishment, expulsion because of this was unheard of; it had never happened before. What one does on Facebook can have a great impact in one's life. Companies are now examining possible employees' Facebook accounts before hiring them in order to decide if they would be good employees.

As a matter of fact, there were several students in my high school that almost got expelled for writing in a negative manner about their teachers and insulting them on Facebook. The first event caused a great upheaval in the school because it was an unprecedented situation; never before had someone been so close to expulsion because of an internet site. Furthermore, I once had a teacher that got fired because of Facebook. He had a Facebook account, and one of his students posted a picture in which he appeared drinking with a group of his students. When the school found out about the photograph, the teacher was fired.

Because the information one posts on Facebook is public and anyone can see it, we must be extremely careful about what we post there and think about how it could be used against us. In fact there was one incident in Florida in which one girl wrote something bad about a group of girls on the internet. To "get back at her", they kidnapped the girl and beat her up. This is an example of how the information someone posts in the site can have great consequences in that person's life.

Whether we like it or not, Facebook has become a very important factor in many people's lives. This is not entirely bad, because it can be very useful to have a Facebook account in order to keep in contact with friends who are far away or with family members that we have not visited in a long time. But the overuse of Facebook can be very dangerous. In some cases Facebook can replace personal interaction between people. Are we starting to replace the face-to-face conversations and interactions that we once had with Facebook email messages and wall posts? Are we forgetting about the importance of personal relations and beginning to replace them with interaction through computers?

This is a frightening scenario, for it could mean that our society is becoming dehumanized. How can we be truly human if we rely on computers to interact with our friends and family? The impact of this change may not be noticeable today, but we will see the effects in the generation that follows us. As time passes, teenagers and children begin to create accounts in Facebook earlier and earlier in their lives. I created my account in ninth grade, but my brother, who is four years younger, created his when he was in seventh grade. And I have seen accounts belonging to children in the fifth grade.

This poses various problems. First of all they become, as my friends would say, "addicted to Facebook" earlier in life, which means that they stop doing other activities, like socializing directly with peers, in order to use Facebook. Furthermore they may not be mature enough to make their private life public at such an early age.

Facebook has impacted many of our lives. High school students and adults now use what began as a social network for college students. This network may have many advantages, but we must also consider the dangers that it presents to society. Every good thing can become dangerous if overused. For this reason, we must become aware of what we do and, although using Facebook is not inherently bad, we should consider the risks it poses in order to protect ourselves. For example, we could control the number of people that have access to our profiles and information, and start using Facebook for controlled amounts of time, instead of connecting six times a day like the girl that was interviewed in the newspaper. Furthermore, we must be careful of what information we post in the site and about how it could be used against us. Is Facebook going to become a friend of society or its foe?